Today Epic Games announced that it completed a $1 billion round of funding, which will allow the company to support future growth opportunities. Epic's equity valuation is now $28.7 billion.

This round includes an additional $200M strategic investment from Sony Group Corporation, which builds on the already close relationship between the two companies and reinforces their shared mission to advance the state of the art in technology, entertainment, and socially-connected online services. Other investment partners include Appaloosa, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC, GIC, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board, funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Park West, KKR, AllianceBernstein, Altimeter, Franklin Templeton and Luxor Capital. Epic continues to have only a single class of common stock outstanding and CEO Tim Sweeney remains the controlling shareholder of the company.

NVIDIA today unveiled the world's first cloud-native, multi-tenant AI supercomputer—the next-generation NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD featuring NVIDIA BlueField -2 DPUs. Fortifying the DGX SuperPOD with BlueField-2 DPUs—data processing units that offload, accelerate and isolate users' data—provides customers with secure connections to their AI infrastructure.

The company also announced NVIDIA Base Command, which enables multiple users and IT teams to securely access, share and operate their DGX SuperPOD infrastructure. Base Command coordinates AI training and operations on DGX SuperPOD infrastructure to enable the work of teams of data scientists and developers located around the globe.

SanDisk Corporation, a Japanese corporation of Western Digital Corporation, changed its organization from the current corporation to a limited liability company on January 1, 2021. SanDisk has decided to change its name to Western Digital. This will change the new trade name to Western Digital GK. New trade name: Western Digital Limited Liability Company, English name: Western Digital GK, Scheduled change date: January 1, 2021.

Western Digital offers NAND flash memory products and HDDs (hard disk drives) at the top level of multiple brand products such as WD and SanDisk brands, from consumers to enterprises and large-scale data centers. We provide total storage solutions developed and mass-produced at. Among them, SanDisk Co., Ltd. has been in charge of the flash memory business, but with this change of trade name, it has become clearer that it is a Western Digital Group, making quicker decisions than ever before, and domestic customers and We aim to create a corporate structure that can further contribute to our business partners.Update 10:27 UTC: Western Digital reached out to us and clarified that this organizational change only pertains to the Japanese entity of Western Digital changing its name from SanDisk Corporation to Western Digital GK. SanDisk Corporation (the Japanese entity) is 100% a subsidiary of Western Digital Corporation. Globally, there have been no changes announced for the SanDisk brand, and existing SanDisk products will continue to carry the brand.

The Trump administration has reportedly been considering adding to Chinese chipmaker SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation) to the trade blacklist of Chinese companies, restricting the company of doing any business with the United States and/or with any of its affiliates. The original report comes from Reuters and it states that the move came from Pentagon after considering whatever SMIC should be placed on a blacklist. It is so far unclear if other US agencies support the decision, however, it should be public in the near future. The company has received the news on Saturday and it was "in complete shock" about the decision. Shortly after the news broke, SMIC stock has fallen as much as 15% amid the possible blacklist. If SMIC would like to continue working with American suppliers, it would need to seek a difficult-to-obtain license from the government.

Update 28th September: The United States government hasofficially imposed sanctions on the Chinese chipmaker SMIC. The company is now under US sanctions and is placed on a trade blacklist.

Intel Corporation announced today that at the company's Jan. 15 board meeting Andy D. Bryant stepped down as chairman and the board elected lead independent director Dr. Omar Ishrak to succeed Bryant as an independent chairman, effective immediately. Intel also announced that Alyssa Henry was elected to Intel's board. Her election marks the seventh new independent director added to Intel's board since the beginning of 2016.

Bryant will remain on the board through the end of Intel's 2020 annual stockholders' meeting. He had previously notified the board in March 2019 that he did not intend to stand for re-election at this year's meeting. Bryant made the decision to leave the role now in order to facilitate an effective transition.

Panasonic, an electronics manufacturing giant, has today sold its silicon manufacturing business, marking the end of an era of Japanese semiconductor manufacturing. Once a big player in silicon manufacturing scene, particularly in the '80s and '90s era when Japan's silicon output was huge, Panasonic was considered one of the main players in the silicon manufacturing business. However, due to some difficulties like operating a business with a loss of over $215 million yearly, and having to compete with Chinese and Taiwanese silicon manufacturing firms, Panasonic is selling its silicon production lines.

The subsidiary of Panasonic called "Semiconductors Solutions" is being sold to Nuvoton Technology Corporation, a semiconductor company that spun-off from Winbond Electronics Corporation in 2008, where Winbond still owns 61% stake in Nuvoton despite the spinoff. Additionally, Panasonic forecasts a 27% drop in operating profit for this physical year, with the declining semiconductor manufacturing business counted. The reasoning behind this sale is that the company plans to exit all declining businesses that also include LCD manufacturing, as Chinese alternative manufacturers are stiff competition for Panasonic when it comes to pricing and panel output.

Microsoft's Corporate Vice President and Deputy General Counsel Julie Brill in a blog post this Monday shared her - and Microsoft's - thoughts on regulation and its relationship to the tech sector. Julie Brill commented on the GDPR implementation originating in Europe, and how that could and should serve as a de facto standard of regulation that forces companies to steer away from the self-accountability on which they have remained for so long - and on which, paraphrasing Apple's own Tim Cook, "There are now too many examples where the no rails have resulted in great damage to society."

Microsoft feels that if left to self-regulation, companies won't do as mucha s they could in the pursuit of privacy and their consumers' rights as they would with a strong enforcement regime being planned and implemented at the governmental level. Of course, I think most of us agree with this at a fundamental level. However, there should also exist some defensive measures around the design and implementation of such governmental measures, such as, for one, no interference from corporations in the regulatory process. These should only serve as consultants, to prevent any ideas of bending the regulations in their behalf, and a pervasive strategy that accounts for both small businesses and huge corporation should also be key. We should remember that while the likes of Microsoft Apple, for example, should have relative ease in updating their practices and implementing regulation-required systems, other, smaller players could either live or die in their capability to quickly adapt to the new requirements. Snuffing out competition to the big companies by enforcing heavy penalties might not be the best road. What do you think? More regulation or self-regulation?